Bloomberg Says Critics of His Spanish Need to ‘Get a Life’

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been unusually reflective lately as he prepares to leave office after 12 years, offered a parting thought Friday to some of his critics — specifically, those who have mocked his sometimes tin-eared attempts over the years at speaking Spanish.

His message? “Get a life.”

Mr. Bloomberg was talking, on his weekly radio show, about his feelings about leaving City Hall and entering a new phase of his career, which will include returning to his namesake company and delving into his role as a philanthropist.

“I know my Spanish is going to be better, and my golf swing is going to be better,” he added. “Hope springs eternal.”

The radio host, John Gambling, joked that, when people ask him about the mayor, he tells them that Mr. Bloomberg’s “biggest disappointments are his golf game and his Spanish.”

Mr. Bloomberg has studied Spanish with a private instructor since he began considering entering politics over a decade ago. He has conducted interviews in Spanish, and at every one of his news conferences he summarizes his remarks in Spanish. His fluency has improved greatly over the years; his accent, not so much. His flat-toned delivery and mispronunciations at news conferences leading up to Tropical Storm Irene’s strike in 2011 inspired a young writer in Inwood, Rachel Figueroa-Levin, to create the @ElBloombito Twitter account, which warned New Yorkers to prepare for “el stormo grande” and “los floodwaters.”

(Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has also adopted the practice of summarizing his news conferences in Spanish, and the results can be similarly uneven. On Thursday, announcing the appointment of William J. Bratton as his police commissioner, he somewhat apprehensively read a summary of his comments in Spanish, producing some titters from the audience of reporters.)

But on Friday morning, Mr. Bloomberg said that his Spanish was “getting better.”

He said that on Thursday night, his Spanish instructor had gathered a group of his longtime clients, and they all spoke Spanish together. “And I wasn’t that far behind,” he said. “I’m O.K.”

He would never be as good as a native speaker, he conceded, but “you know, I’m going to get there; I don’t have any doubts about that.”

“And these people that make fun of me, you know, what do I care?” he added, showing, perhaps, the slightest hint that he might. “You know, you wonder, why don’t they just get a life?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Bloomberg Says Critics of His Spanish Need to ‘Get a Life’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe